


Fire The Fields, The Weed Is Sown

by ThisMessIsAPlace (DJFero)



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: But you can still draw what conclusions your shipper hearts desire idc, Does the ampersand indicate platonic pairings because otherwise I'm gonna be embarrassed, Foul mouthed space pirates, Gen, Major hurt and a bit of comfort, Major spoilers for Vol. 2, No ships represented or intended, mentions of child abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-11
Updated: 2017-05-11
Packaged: 2018-10-30 14:00:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10878264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DJFero/pseuds/ThisMessIsAPlace
Summary: “You didn't shit it up too much,” Yondu admits at length. “Jes gotta learn when to show yer back and when to show yer gun, an’ someday you'll be half like a real Ravager.”He lands a hand on Peter's shoulder and he squeezes enough Peter feels it in the muscle. They don't say anything more.





	Fire The Fields, The Weed Is Sown

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "M4 Part II" by Faunts.
> 
> Fic unintentionally prompted by Tumblr user professor-pastry.

Blunt, calloused fingers find a good hold in his cheeks, dig them in against his molars until it hurts. Fear of more hurt makes him stop thrashing and stare up at the face staring him down.

 

There are a thousand things to notice here, a thousand thousand more than he can reconcile. Among them:

 

  * There's a greenish man (he thinks it's a man) in the corner of his vision whose head looks like a kernel of popped corn.



 

  * Between the filth and the leather and the metal, everywhere he looks he expects to find Mel Gibson coming to his rescue with a rusted shotgun.



 

  * The floor hums beneath his sneakers, tickling the soles of his feet.



 

  * And if he could look up past his captor, out the window he'd see the earth shrinking.



 

(It's better he doesn't.)

 

Foremost of it all, the face grimacing at him is as blue as grandpa’s Buick and full of jagged metal teeth.

 

The alien uses his grip to turn his head one way then the other, down then up, like he's inspecting a steer at market. He sneers:

 

“Ugly little shit, aincha?”

 

(It's English in his right ear, filtered through the device someone clamped on him, but something else entirely buzzes in his uncovered left ear.)

 

Without his permission, his squashed fish-mouth rejoins:

 

“Thaff nop whup your fifter faid.”

 

The first time Yondu lays hands on Peter, he busts his nose.

  
  
  
  
  


 

Gamora is waiting on her boot tips at the hardlight barrier with the posture of a guitar string tightened to snapping. She's waiting for the access hatch to slam shut on the other side of him, for the airlock to pressurize, and she rocks with adrenaline that's fresh or leftover or a bit of both. Quill barely sees her.

 

( _ “Come on” _ )

 

The space suit gives him a pocket of insulated oxygen corralled within a non-conductive bubble, but he still can't seem to get enough air into his lungs. Barely enough to support his screams ( _ “come on come on come the fuck on” _ ) at the life-support vents. ( _ “hurry the shit up come ON” _ ) They clang open and vomit heat and air into the chamber too slow,  _ (“COME ON PLEASE COME ON” _ ) too goddamn slow.

  
  
  
  
  


 

 

“What’d I tell you, boy?” Yondu demands, and flicks his ear. “Finger off the--”

 

“The safety's on!” Peter protests. He claps a hand over his injured ear. The other hand tips the pistol off target when he looks away from the sights. Yondu snatches his wrist to keep it pointed away from himself, then reaches around and flicks the other ear, harder this time. Peter yelps.

 

“Oh, well  _ I'm awful sorry _ ,” he snarls, and Peter thinks that he doesn't sound very sincerely apologetic, “is yer translator on the fritz? 'Cause you seem to think I taught you to keep yer finger off the trigger  _ unless the safety’s on. _ 'Zat what I taught you, Quill? Izzat what you heard?”

 

“What?!” Peter shouts, right ear clasped under his left palm and the other jammed against his shoulder, “I can't hear you!”

 

Yondu’s jaw tightens up so his temple throbs against the strain. His lips curl back and bare his crooked teeth--

 

“Okay, kidding! I'm kidding! Look--” He straightens his index finger to point it down the length of the blaster instead, rests it flat against the trigger guard. “Finger off the trigger ‘til you  _ mean _ to pull it an’ blast a sunnuvabitch,” he recites in his best Yondu Growl.

 

Satisfied, Yondu looms a little less aggressively, relaxing back on his haunches and releasing Peter's gun hand. “Back to business, if you've got the all kiddin’ outta yer system.” He gestures towards the targets, and Peter releases his grip on his throbbing ears to brace the blaster with both palms again. At some point in the last two years he stopped noticing the garbled noise of Yondu's native tongue beneath the translation being fed into his head.

 

He resets his aim.

 

There's a terrible thrill to holding a plasma pistol with the power pack loaded.

 

He’s disassembled it down to diodes and circuitry and put it back together again so many times he could do it by touch alone in just over half a minute. If you asked he could tell you it has a maximum effective range of 1500 yards, a flat progressive trigger, and three modes: semi-automatic; multi-charge burst; and an overclocked continuous beam for when some bastard needs to be  _ unusually dead _ (Half-Nut’s words), and only if he's made peace with the heat sink melting straight through the back strap after 6.2 seconds of sustained fire.

 

He could tell you that with the recycling mod, a single power pack can charge 130 shots (or one total burnout on fully-automatic when the heat sink goes critical and blows the whole circuit).

 

In learning all this he's still never held a  _ loaded _ weapon before.

 

Yondu’s grip on his elbow is rough but not bruising. “Straighten yer arms and set yer shoulders square -- thassit. This bad boy here’s 'bout a hunnerd generations  _ e-volved  _ past the combustion rounds you Terrans’re still usin’,” he drawls, “but it'll still kick them pretty white teeth out yer ugly head if you ain't got control.”

 

He glances down at Peter's feet and taps the knuckles of his free hand against the boy's inner left ankle. “Spread that stance a bit more, one foot back. There.  _ Now _ . Eyes on the front sight.”

 

The first shot nicks the side of the old metal crate, burns a hole through a tree behind it, and knocks Peter on his ass and the breath out of his lungs. But he keeps all his pretty white teeth.

 

He's ready when he tries again, and he could probably keep his footing even without Yondu's left hand braced between his shoulderblades. The second shot hits the target but low, beneath the outermost ring they've chalked on its face. The third and fourth do the same. Yondu tells him he's dipping the pistol down as he pulls the trigger, overcompensating for the anticipated kick now that he's learned to be afraid of it. 

 

He claps Peter a little too hard on the shoulder and tells him not to ever be scared of a gun when he's on this side of its business end.

  
  
  
  
  


 

 

Gamora is moving like a gunshot when the barrier dissolves and the space suit disengages. She drops and skids to her knees on the floor to join them both. She must have said a sum of five words to Yondu at best but she checks him first. Bless her, she has a medikit and she checks Yondu first, because she must see that Quill is fine and they  _ need to save Yondu. _

 

Her hands flutter and land on the old man's chest and just… stay there. The medikit stays closed. Gamora hesitates. “Quill…”

 

“What are you doing?!” His mouth is moving on autopilot. He lunges across Yondu’s body--

 

He lunges across Yondu, leans over to snatch the kit from beside Gamora.

 

“Historians take note, Miss Efficient is wasting goddamn time! This isn't the moment for doe eyes, give me the damn--” She's faster than he is, has her hands on both his wrists before he can grab the latch. “What are you  _ doing _ , look at him, he needs--”

 

“ _ Quill _ .” That special blend of firm and so, so gentle.

 

“No. No no no, don't do this ‘he's dead, Jim’ thing to me right now, we don't have time for melodrama, just give me the medikit. Just--” His voice cracks, he hears it. He drops the volume to a dangerous, shaky whisper, glaring hard sharp edges back against the soft look she's giving him. “Just give me the kit.” Her grip tightens, and she brings Quill's hands together between hers.

 

He snaps, thrashes, drags his eyes away from that pitying look in hers to the  _ empty _ look in Yondu’s and tries to rip himself free. “Gamora give me the kit.” His voice cracks again and jumps back up to hysterically  _ loud. _ “Let go, let GO,  _ GIVE ME THE--” _

 

Rocket’s arms wrap all the way around his biceps, just one arm restrained, but Rocket is strong enough that that doesn't mean nothing. Quill’s not sure where he came from, but he doesn't care. He just screams in wordless frustration. He screams because this is a betrayal. There's a life on the line.

 

“He's gone, Quill,” Rocket tells him soberly.

 

He doesn't care what Rocket says. He can't let Yondu be gone. He fights and he screams.

  
  
  
  
  


 

 

The cigar doesn't smell much like the cheap ones Peter's great uncle chews on and, occasionally, lights. It doesn't look a lot like them either, because it's wrapped in glossy black and it sparks and fizzes like burning steel wool when Yondu puffs on it. The gouts and streams of smoke are opaque orange; Peter is reminded against his will of the colorful little smoke bombs that were all his mom would let him burn by himself on the earliest Independence Days he can remember.

 

Yondu's strides are long and Peter has to walk almost double-time to keep up. “Why’re we walking away?” Peter asks.

 

He glances over his shoulder to gauge how the client's receiving it. He catches her glare over Kraglin's shoulder as the man hikes his belt up a little higher, and hooks his thumbs in lazily, and goes right on talking. (“ _ Well, true, job ain't been done quite to yer specific specifications, you got us dead to rights on that front, but consider: it sure got  _ done _ , huh? _ ”)

 

Peter curses himself inwardly, because he may not know why Yondu's leaving the negotiations but he does know it's a cool and aloof kind of leaving, and he just ruined his share of it by letting her catch him looking back.

 

Yondu confirms Peter's suspicion with an open-handed thump on the back of his head. “Kraglin ain't got pretty words like I do, but he ain't stupid neither. I figger he can handle it jes fine.”

 

“Okay, yeah,” Peter agrees, slowly and unconvincingly, because he isn't very convinced himself. “But I thought we'd get paid a lot quicker if you'd just do the thing with threats and the arrow.”

 

“I am not opposed to extortin’ wimmen,” Yondu admits thoughtfully.

 

He strides through the automatic door of the client's gleaming condo and out onto the rooftop garden path back to civilization. It's a… third or fourth vacation home situation, Peter's pretty sure: a luxury planet off-the-radar enough to do business and a home nice enough to put on a show when she's intimidating pirates and mercs. But not so nice she'll need to renovate the whole thing in a fit of pique just because Yondu smoked indoors and put his grimy boots up on the table.

 

“Thissun’s too big for her britches, though. Got friends in high places and thinks we oughta be too scared of 'em to make her pay us what we're due.”

 

“I think we should be scared of the Nova Corps, maybe,” Peter interjects reasonably. “Just a little bit scared.  _ Nervous _ , you know? Four on a scale of ten.”

 

Yondu grunts, punches the call button for the lift, and puffs his cigar. He blows a few placid rings and inspects the ember boredly before he responds.

 

“If she could bring 'em down on us they'd have come down already,” is what he says first, with a dismissive wave of his hand to brush that topic out of their way so he can move on to the real point. Peter knows the real point is here when Yondu raises a finger and turns to look him in the eye. This doesn't require bending his neck as much as it used to. “The arrow sends a message that you ain't a threat, ‘cause I'll end you the second you start threatenin’ to  _ be _ one.”

 

“What message does your back send?” Peter asks.

 

Yondu grins, cigar clenched in his too-sharp teeth, and Peter supposes he picked the right question.

 

“That you'll  _ never _ be a threat worth threatening back.”

 

Peter digests that for a moment. Then, "Jesus said to turn the other cheek,” he observes solemnly. “I only bring it up because you and Jesus agreeing on something is the weirdest thing to happen since I got abducted by alien pirates.”

 

“You givin’ me lip, boy?” Yondu growls. His voice says the question is rhetorical, but the perplexed crease between his eyebrows disagrees.

 

“I'm giving you cheek.”

 

Yondu thumps him over the head again.

 

The ride down to the neon-lit streets is quiet except for Peter's occasional pointed cough that Yondu and his cigar blithely ignore. The lift whooshes back upward the second the clear doors slide shut, which Peter takes to mean Kraglin’s taking his leave behind them.

 

They stop at the curb to wait out a rush of traffic that's mostly an expensive-looking motion blur of colored lights and dark metal whizzing past.

 

“Them bruises from the job?” Yondu asks suddenly, over the hum of fission engines flying by. He doesn't seem invested in the answer.

 

“Yeah,” Peter says automatically. Yondu knows that's not true. Peter knows he knows. Neither of them addresses it.

 

Yondu passes him the cigar, and Peter takes it gingerly, his nose scrunching up in preemptive sympathy for his throat. But there's this expectation. He puffs on it as best he can while Yondu watches a hologram scroll out an ad for some opera overhead.

 

“You didn't shit it up too much,” Yondu admits at length. “Jes gotta learn when to show yer back and when to show yer gun, an’ someday you'll be half like a real Ravager.”

 

He lands a hand on Peter's shoulder and he squeezes enough Peter feels it in the muscle. They don't say anything more.

  
  
  
  
  


 

 

In the end it's a concerted effort. Gamora could manhandle him on her own, he thinks dimly. (Later, anyway, when the quiet comes down like a curtain.)

 

She could if she weren’t half treating him like glass. As it is, it's all over when Drax joins the fray.

 

He'd be mortified if he could see this from the outside: flailing legs and bloodshot eyes, spit and tears and screaming like an animal. It’d be  _ easier _ if he could see it from the outside. He can’t, and that's the worst part, he  _ can't, _ caught in a limbo where he can't think in a straight line but he can't just check out, either.

 

He's there for the stark image of Yondu shrinking like the earth as Quill is taken away, thick gray arms pinning Quill’s own to his chest and his boot heels dragging and kicking on the floor. He's there for the way the background dims out around the scene like a spotlight on a stage, like an old chiaroscuro painting of Rocket hanging behind to close Yondu's eyes with careful paws. Then they pull him around a corner and the scene is out of sight.

 

Kraglin flattens himself against a wall to make room and doesn't watch them go by, his downturned face scrunched up with ugly tears that make Quill wail harder because if they're  _ both _ having this nightmare, then that makes it  _ real _ .

 

Drax and Gamora pick a room at random to pull him into while his hysterics run their course, and then to wait out the exhausted sobbing that follows after. Gamora’s hand in his hair isn't welcome, and neither is a face full of Drax’s sweaty shoulder as he cries, because he's not a baby even though a little voice says he's acting like one.

 

The touch isn't welcome but it’s offered and it's tolerated, because that's what family does.

 

 

  
  
  
  
  
  
The last time Yondu lays hands on Peter, it's to pat his cheek, to tell him they're both alright.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are always appreciated, even if all you've got for me is screams, smashed keys, and a curse on my black soul.
> 
> As always this was written on my phone in installments of fifteen minute breaks at work and has not been beta read. Which isn't a plea for mercy, I'm just putting my excuses on the table where we can all see them.
> 
> Carry on.


End file.
